


And I Give That Hope Your Name

by thalialunacy



Category: Star Trek RPF
Genre: First Time, M/M, Pining, Writer's Block
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-15
Updated: 2013-11-15
Packaged: 2018-01-01 16:28:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1046021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thalialunacy/pseuds/thalialunacy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Chris gets writer's block and nobody's really helpful. Except Karl.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And I Give That Hope Your Name

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Bodhi and his writer's block, ancient history both of them. Also to A.A. Milne. Title by Ani DiFranco.  
> Disclaimer: I don't know these people, and I don't claim to, so please don't sue me. Also, don't be hatin, we just like the fuckin.

_I feel like… I've written it all._

\---

The page stares at him. Blank, but for that one little line.

Twenty-seven and it's come to this.

\---

"It's come to this, Katie," he says, waving his cigarette around. The smoke hits her personal space and she wrinkles her nose. "I have nothing left to say."

She takes the cigarette from his fingers, easily, takes a tiny drag, then pushes it out in the cheap plastic ashtray. "For now."

\---

And she's right, of course. She's right to talk him into doing Kirk. But not for the reasons she does it.

\---

Women inspire him. Karl _magnetizes_ him.

\---

So much so that at first, he thinks he has the flu.

\---

"What." Or at least that's what Chris thinks Zach's said; it's all choked through cigarette smoke and he's not really sure.

"Don't laugh at me."

"Oh, sweetheart, trust me. This is crying."

Chris grunts into his cigarette. "As long as that’s it."

\---

The notebook arrives at Chris's house a week later. It's wrapped in a pink ribbon, and in little Zach letters on the bottom inside left corner (always the fucking left), it says 'the cure for what ails you.'

Chris snorts, then throws it onto a pile of dirty laundry.

More blank pages. Quinto doesn't know shit.

\---

He turns to reading a lot of other people's non-blank pages. Fiction, yeah, but also essays. Biopics. He even borrows his mother's Barbara Kingsolver collection.

But he doesn't write.

The words, they collect inside of him. Like he's a giant balloon filled with letters that just keep multiplying, breeding, having endless little typographical babies. He feels stretched. Thin.

\---

His birthday rolls around, like they do, and presents trickle in. The rub, the real pain about having the life he has is that people aren't around, or at least aren't around in any sort of pattern. But they do the best they can. Zoe sends a bottle of ridiculously expensive cologne by bike messenger, who gives him a look that clearly means she's available for extra. That sort of thing.

(He declines, in that instance. And goes back to his Kerouac. Those words feel like pinpricks, and he likes it. Hopes that one of them, maybe, will get through. Cause a tear, cause a flood, and relieve him of this burden.)

\---

There's a knock on the door, instead.

Karl is the person he's least expecting, so of course it's Karl. The dude's like magic, so Chris is only surprised for about two seconds. "Hey," he says, words rising up like bile. He clears his throat. "Come on in."

Karl only takes a few steps in, so they're standing in the foyer awkwardly. "I don't have very long, but I wanted to drop by your birthday present."

Chris's forehead is hot. He tries on a smile. It works okay. "Well, you didn't have to, but I'm not going to say no." And he reaches for what Karl is offering. It's clearly a book, but when he gets the wrapping off, he's admittedly non-plussed.

He looks up, and raises an eyebrow. "Winnie the Pooh?" The words taste strange.

Karl looks down at the book for a second, his hands in his pockets. "Yeah. You've been—I heard you've been in a bit of a place, recently, and I—" He shrugs, not embarrassed but still Karl. "It always works for me."

"It does."

"Yeah." Karl's lips twitch into a smile, and he leans in to flip to a page in the book. "Especially this one." He doesn't take it from Chris's hands, he just reads. " _It is more fun to talk with someone who doesn't use long, difficult words but rather short, easy words like 'What about lunch?'_ "

There's a moment, a suspended moment where the words just hang, then the laughter erupts from Chris like a natural event, like god damn Old Faithful. Then Karl's joins him, and the sound bounces through his house, and his skin is so very, very thin that it just—it just happens.

His lips are on Karl's, warm and dry and instinctive, the taste of laughter in their mouths.

It doesn't last very long before the words clamour in Chris's mind, sharp and loud, and he pulls back sharply. "I'm sorry, I—"

"No—"

Chris puts his hands up. "No, I know, I shouldn't have, and I'm sorry—"

"No, Chris—" And Chris realizes Karl's hands are gripping his biceps to hold him closer, not push him away. "It's fine."

Chris blinks. "It's… fine?"

The smile that spreads across Karl's face is like Christmas and butter cream pudding all mixed together. "It's. Fine. It's more than fine. It's _awesome_." And the smile turns into a grin, with dimples, and he's such a _dork_ that Chris has to lean in and kiss him again, and it escalates rather quickly because it _is_ totally awesome.

When he feels it inching inexorably towards the bedroom, he pauses. He leans into Karl's cheek, breathing hard. "I thought you didn't have very long."

Karl pulls back long enough to extract the now-rumpled book from between them. He holds onto it for a second, like it's precious to him, then sets it gently on the side table, where Chris's keys and wallet wait patiently for him to figure out his shit.

He reaches for one of Chris's restless hands, and pulls him in. His lips are warm, and the words, just for a second, stop jumping. " _I just wanted to be sure of you_."

\---

Usually, Chris wakes up like a meth-head looking for a fix, angry and desperate and with awful teeth. Today is different. Well, the teeth still hold true, but when he first realizes he's awake, it's a slow roll into realizing he's got a Karl Urban in bed with him.

He opens his eyes as wide as he can. Karl's asleep, his snores ridiculously endearing, on his back, one arm behind his head and one leg bent. The sheet is haphazardly flung across them both, and Chris pulls it back, drinking in all the sights he can, from jaw to nipple to inner elbow, down to pubic hair and the turn of a knee.

At the splayed-out thigh, his eyes pause, arrested in their flight. There's something about it. Something about the line of muscle he can see, the evolution of coarse to fine hairs, the strength he knows is there over the soft human condition that everyone has.

His heart stops, just stops, and when it thunders back on again, he can't think of anything but how he has to get a pen, right fucking now, and has never been so relieved by his own inability to get rid of sentimental offerings because Zach's gift is still nestled among some books on his bedside shelf. He may or may not give himself a paper cut before finally getting a shaky sentence out, but once it starts, once the flood begins, he's gone.

\---

He writes forever. He writes of grasshoppers, of the 5-7-5 of haiku and the I-IV-V-I of every pop song ever and at the end, he stares at the page full of scribbles and thinks, _Okay. I can do this._

The hand on his waist is warm and it tugs him back towards the mattress. "Just a sec," he mumbles, his hand working the pen across the white space of the top margin, huge capital block letters filling it in.

He feels Karl's chin on his shoulder, then feels is wriggle as Karl reads what he's just written. " _No longer a blank page_ , eh?"

Chris feels the smile crinkle up his eyes. He closes the notebook, pen still inside it, and tosses it to side of the bed. He turns and slides his arms around Karl, pushing them back into the pile of blankets and sweat. "Nope." He kisses him, warm and languid, centered. Settled. "Never again."

_**fin** _


End file.
